by Val McDermid
‘It turned up in an abandoned house in Tuscany. The place is falling down, been empty for years. According to the locals, it had been squatted on and off. The last lot cleared out overnight. No warning, no goodbyes. They left a lot of gear behind. Half a dozen of these posters included.’
Lawson shook his head. ‘Pretty meaningless. We’ve had a few posters like this turn up over the years. Because Sinclair faked it up to look like some anarchist group hitting on Brodie Maclennan Grant, every now and again you’d get wankers using the poster to promote some direct action or festival or whatever. We checked them out every time, and there was never a connection to what happened to Catriona.’ He waved a hand dismissively.
Karen smiled. ‘You think I didn’t know that? At least that much made it into the files. But this is different. None of the copies that turned up before was exact. There were differences in the detail, the way there would be if you were copying it off old newspaper cuttings. But this one’s different. It’s exactly the same. Forensics say it’s identical. That it came off the same silk screen.’
Lawson’s eyes brightened, the spark of interest suddenly obvious in him. ‘You’re kidding?’
‘They’ve had all weekend to make their minds up. They say there’s no doubt. But why would you keep the screen all these years? It’s the one piece of evidence that ties the kidnappers into the crime.’
Lawson smirked. ‘Maybe they didn’t keep the screen. Maybe they just hung on to the posters.’
Karen shook her head. ‘Not according to the document examiner. Neither the paper nor the ink had been developed in 1985. This was produced recently. On the original screen.’
‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Like so many other things about this case,’ Karen muttered. Without realizing, she had slipped into her historic relationship with the man opposite. She was the junior officer, pricking him into making sense of the scraps she laid at his feet.
Unconsciously, Lawson responded, relaxing into the conversation for the first time. ‘What other things?’ he said. ‘Once we’d fixed on Sinclair, it all came together.’
‘I don’t see it. Why would Fergus Sinclair kill Cat at the handover?’
‘Because she could identify him.’
The impatience in his voice stung Karen, reminding her of their present roles. ‘I understand that. But why kill her then? Why not kill her beforehand? With her alive at the handover, he was setting up a really complicated situation. He had to control Cat and the baby, get his hands on the ransom, then shoot Cat and get away with the baby in the resulting confusion. He couldn’t even be sure that he’d kill her. Not in the dark, with everybody milling around. It would have made life a lot simpler for him to have killed her before the ransom handover. Why didn’t he kill her earlier?’
‘Proof of life,’ Lawson said with the satisfaction of a man trumping an ace. ‘Brodie required proof of life before he’d go ahead.’
‘No, that doesn’t fly,’ Karen said. ‘The kidnapper still had the bairn. He could use Adam for proof of life. You’re not telling me Brodie Grant would refuse to pay the ransom if he didn’t have proof of life for Cat too.’
‘No…He’d have paid whether Cat was alive or dead.’ Lawson frowned. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that. You’re right. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Of course, if it wasn’t Sinclair, she might not have had to die.’ Karen’s eyes went dreamy as she tried the idea on for size. ‘It might have been a stranger. She might not have been able to identify him. Maybe it was an accident?’
Lawson cocked his head to one side and gave her a speculative look. Karen felt as if her fitness for purpose were being assessed. He did a little drum roll with his fingers on the edge of the chipped table. ‘Sinclair could have been the kidnapper, Karen. But not necessarily the killer. You see, there’s something else that wasn’t in the report.’
Wednesday 23rd January 1985; Newton of Wemyss
The tension was excruciating. The bulk of the Lady’s Rock took a bite out of the starry sky, blocking out the shoreline beyond. The cold nibbled at Lawson’s nose and ears and around the narrow bracelet between his leather gloves and the cuffs of his sweater. The air held the acrid tang of coal smoke and salt. The nearby sea was only a faint rumble and whisper on this windless night. The waning moon gave just enough light for him to see the taut features of Brodie Maclennan Grant a few yards away, just clear of the trees that sheltered Lawson himself. One hand held the holdall with the cash, the diamonds and the tracking transmitters, the other grasped his wife’s elbow tightly. Lawson imagined the pain radiating from that pincer grip and was glad he wasn’t on the receiving end of it. Mary Maclennan Grant’s face was in shadow, her head bowed. Lawson imagined she was shivering inside her fur coat, and not from the cold.
What he couldn’t see were the half-dozen men he had stationed among the trees. That was just as well. If he couldn’t see them, neither could the kidnappers. He’d hand-picked them, choosing the ones he believed to be both clever and brave, two qualities that coincided less often than he liked to admit. A couple of them were firearms trained, one with a handgun, the other on top of the Lady’s Rock with an assault rifle, complete with night sights. They were under orders not to shoot except on his direct order. Lawson sincerely hoped he was over-reacting by having them there.
He’d managed to pry some other uniforms from their routine duties guarding the pit heads and the power stations. Their buddies had resented their detachment, all the more since Lawson hadn’t been in a position to explain the reason for their temporary secondment to his command. These extra officers were stationed at the rough ground at either end of the wood, the nearest points to the rendezvous where vehicles could be parked. Between them, they should be able to prevent a getaway if Lawson and his immediate team bungled the take-down at the handover.
Which was more than a possibility. This was a nightmare of a set-up. He’d tried to persuade Grant to say no, to insist on another place for the handover. Anything but a bloody beach in the middle of the night. He might as well have saved his breath. As far as Grant was concerned, Lawson and his men were there as a sort of private security force. He acted as if he was doing them enough of a favour by inviting them along against the express instructions of whoever had taken his daughter and grandson. In spite of what he’d said about the kidnap insurers’ team, he didn’t seem to appreciate how much could go wrong. It really didn’t bear thinking about.
Lawson snatched a look at the luminous dial of his watch. Three minutes to go. It was so still, he’d have expected to hear their car engine in the distance. But acoustics were always unpredictable in the open. He’d noticed when he walked the path during his earlier reconnaissance how the looming bulk of the Lady’s Rock acted as a baffle, cutting off the sound of the sea as effectively as a set of ear protectors. God alone knew how the woodland would distort the sound of an approaching vehicle.
Then without warning a brilliant burst of white light from the direction of the rock wiped out his night vision. All Lawson could make out was the mesmerizing circle of light. Without conscious thought, he stepped further back into the trees, afraid his cover was blown.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Brodie Grant yelped, letting go of his wife and taking a couple of steps forward.
‘Stay where you are.’ A disembodied shout from beyond the light. Lawson tried to place the accent, but there was nothing distinctive about it other than its Scottishness.
Lawson could make out Grant’s profile, all colour stripped from his skin by the bleaching white light. His lips were stretched back over his teeth in a snarl. Unease squirmed in Lawson’s stomach like acid indigestion. How the hell had the kidnappers got into position at the side of the rock without him seeing them? The moonlight had been enough to illuminate the path in both directions. He’d expected a vehicle. They had two hostages, after all. They could hardly route march them a mile up the beach from West Wemyss or East Wemyss. The steep cliff behind him ruled out N
ewton of Wemyss.
The kidnapper shouted again. ‘OK, let’s do it. Just like we said. Mrs Grant, you walk towards us with the money.’
‘Not without proof of life,’ Grant bellowed.
The words were barely out of his mouth when a figure stumbled out in front of the light, a stark marionette that reminded Lawson of the posters the kidnappers had used to deliver their demands. As his eyes adjusted, he could see it was Cat. ‘It’s me, Daddy,’ she called, her voice hoarse. ‘Mummy, bring me the money.’
‘What about Adam?’ Grant shouted, grabbing his wife by the shoulder as she reached for the holdall. Mary nearly tripped and fell, but her husband had no eyes for her. ‘Where’s my grandson, you bastards?’
‘He’s all right. As soon as they have the money and the diamonds, they’ll hand him over,’ Cat shouted, desperation obvious in her voice. ‘Please, Mummy, bring the money like you’re supposed to.’
‘Damn it,’ Grant said. He thrust the holdall at his wife. ‘Go on, do what she says.’
This was out of control, Lawson knew it. To hell with the radio silence he’d called for. He reached for his radio and spoke as clearly as he dared. ‘Tango One and Tango Two. This is Tango Lima. Despatch officers to shore side of Lady’s Rock. Do it now. Do not reply. Just deploy. Do it now.’
As he spoke, he could see Mary walking uncertainly towards her daughter, shoulders hunched. He estimated there was about thirty-five yards between them. It seemed to him that Mary was covering more of the distance than her daughter. As they came within touching distance, he could see Cat reaching for the bag.
To his surprise, that was the moment Mary chose to cast aside the conditioning of thirty years’ marriage to Brodie Grant. Instead of doing what she’d been told, first by the kidnappers’ note and secondly by her husband, Mary clung on to the holdall in spite of Cat’s efforts to pull it from her. He could hear Cat’s exasperation as she said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Mother, give me the bloody thing. You don’t know what you’re dealing with here.’
‘Give her the bloody bag, Mary,’ Grant yelled. Lawson could hear the man’s breath rattling in his chest.
Then the kidnapper’s voice rang out again. ‘Hand it over, Mrs Grant. Or you won’t see Adam again.’
Lawson registered the horror on Cat’s face as she looked desperately over her shoulder into the light. ‘No, wait,’ she shouted. ‘It’s all going to be fine.’ She seemed to wrest the bag from her mother and take a step backwards.
Suddenly Grant sprang forward half a dozen paces, his hand disappearing inside his overcoat. ‘Damn it,’ he said. Then his voice rose. ‘I want my grandson and I want him now.’ His hand emerged, the dull sheen of an automatic pistol obvious in the glare of the light. ‘Nobody move. I’ve got a gun and I’m not afraid to use it. Bring Adam out now.’
Later, Lawson would wonder at the collection of bad clichés that was Brodie Maclennan Grant. But at that moment, all he could feel was the weight of catastrophe as time seemed to slow. He started to run towards Grant as the businessman raised his arms in a two-handed shooter’s stance. But before Lawson could take a second step, the light cut out, leaving him blind and helpless. He saw the flash of a muzzle near him, heard a shot, smelled cordite. Then a replay of the same sequence but this time from a distance. He tripped over a fallen branch and fell headlong. Heard a scream. A child crying. A high-pitched voice repeating, ‘Fuck.’ Then realized the voice was his.
A third shot rang out, this time from the woods. Lawson tried to stand, but hot spikes of pain spiralled up through his ankle. He rolled on his side, scrabbling for torch and radio. ‘Hold your fire,’ he yelled into the radio. ‘Hold your fire, that’s an order.’ As he spoke, he could see torch beams criss-crossing the area as his men swarmed round the base of the rock.
‘They’ve got a fucking boat,’ he heard somebody shout. Then a roar louder than the waves as the engine caught. Lawson closed his eyes momentarily. What a fiasco. He should have tried harder to make Grant refuse this set-up. It had been doomed from the start. He wondered what they’d managed to get away with. The kid, certainly. The money, probably. The daughter, maybe.
But he was wrong about Catriona Maclennan Grant. Terribly, horribly wrong.
Monday 2nd July 2007; Peterhead
‘Brodie Maclennan Grant had a gun?’ Karen’s voice rose to a squeak. ‘He fired a gun? And you kept that out of the report?’
‘I had no choice. And it seemed like a good idea at the time,’ Lawson said with the cynical air of a man quoting his superiors.
‘A good idea? Cat Grant died that night. In what sense was it a good idea?’ Karen couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The idea of such cavalier behaviour was completely alien to her.
Lawson sighed. ‘The world’s changed, Karen. We didn’t have a Police Complaints Commissioner. We didn’t have the kind of scrutiny you live with.’
‘Obviously,’ she said drily, remembering why he was where he was. ‘But still. You managed to cover up a civilian discharging a weapon in the middle of a police operation? Money talks, right enough.’
Lawson shook his head impatiently. ‘It wasn’t just money talking, Karen. The Chief Constable was thinking PR as well. Grant’s only child was dead. His grandchild was missing. As far as the public was concerned, he was a victim. If we’d prosecuted him for the firearms offences, it would have looked like we were being vindictive - we can’t catch the real villains, so we’ll have you instead - that sort of thing. The view was that nobody’s interests were served by revealing that Grant had been armed.’
‘Could it have been Grant’s shot that killed Cat?’ Karen demanded, forearms on the table, head thrusting like a rugby forward’s.
Lawson shifted in his chair, leaning his weight to one side. ‘She was shot in the back. Work it out for yourself.’
Karen leaned back in her chair, not liking the answer she came up with, but knowing there would be nothing better coming from the man opposite her. ‘You were a right bunch of fucking cowboys in the old days, weren’t you?’ There was no admiration in her tone.
‘We got the job done,’ Lawson said. ‘The public got what they wanted.’
‘The public didn’t know the half of it, by all accounts.’ She sighed. ‘So we’ve got three gunshots, not the two that appear in the report?’
He nodded. ‘For all the difference it makes.’ He shifted again, angling his body towards the door.
‘Is there anything else I should know about that didn’t make it to the case file?’ Karen said, reasserting herself as the person in control of the interview.
Lawson tilted his head back, eyeing the corner where the walls and ceiling met. He exhaled noisily then pushed his lips out. ‘I think that’s it,’ he finally said. He dragged his eyes back to meet her weary gaze. ‘We thought it was Fergus Sinclair at the time. And nothing’s happened since to change my mind on that one.’
Campora, Tuscany
The warmth of the Tuscan sun melted the stiffness in Bel’s shoulders. She was sitting in the shade of a chestnut tree tucked away behind the cluster of houses at the tail end of Boscolata. If she craned her neck, she could see one corner of the terracotta tiled roof of Paolo Totti’s ruined villa. Her more immediate view was, however, rather more appealing. On a low table in front of her was a jug of red wine, a bottle of water and a bowl of figs. Around the table, her primary sources. Giulia, a young woman with a tumbled mane of black hair and skin marked with the angry puce scars of old acne, who made hand-painted toys for the tourist market in a converted pig sty; and Renata, a blonde Dutch woman with a complexion the colour of Gouda, who worked part-time in the restoration department of the Pinoteca Nationale in nearby Siena. According to Grazia, who was leaning against the tree-trunk shelling a sack of peas, the carabinieri had talked to both of the women already.
The social pleasantries had to be observed, and Bel contained herself while they chatted together. Eventually, Grazia moved them on. ‘Bel is also interested in what happ
ened at the Totti villa,’ she said.
Renata nodded portentously. ‘I always thought someone would come asking about that,’ she said in perfectly enunciated Italian that sounded like computer-generated speech.
‘Why?’ Bel asked.
‘They left so suddenly. One day they were here, the next day they were gone,’ Renata said.
‘They went without a word,’ Giulia said, looking sulky. ‘I couldn’t believe it. Dieter was supposed to be my boyfriend, but he didn’t even say goodbye. I was the one who discovered they were gone. I went over to have coffee with Dieter that morning, just like I always did when they weren’t setting off early for a show. And the place was deserted. As if they’d thrown everything they could grab hold of into the vans and just taken off. I haven’t heard from that bastard Dieter since.’
‘When was this?’ Bel asked.
‘At the end of April. We had plans for the Mayday holiday, but that all came to nothing.’ Giulia was clearly still pissed off.
‘How many of them were there?’ Bel said. Between them, Giulia and Renata counted them off on their fingers. Dieter, Maria, Rado, Sylvia, Matthias, Peter, Luka, Ursula and Max. A mongrel mix from all over Europe. A motley crew that seemed on the face of it to have nothing to do with Cat Grant. ‘What were they doing there?’ she asked.
Renata grinned. ‘I suppose you would say they were borrowing the place. They turned up last spring in two battered old camper vans and a flashy Winnebago and just moved in. They were very friendly, very sociable.’ She shrugged. ‘We’re all a little alternative here in Boscolata. This place was a ruin back in the seventies when a few of us moved in illegally. Gradually we bought the properties and restored them to what you see now. So we were pretty sympathetic to our new neighbours.’
